Winnipeg Jets head coach Claude Noel was talking about his No. 1 goalie, Thursday, when he struck at the heart of the matter.

“I’m not expecting him to carry anything,” Noel said.

“We need to help each other out, and we need to help him out as well.”

The common refrain seems to be that Ondrej Pavelec must raise his game to another level if he wants to lead his team onto the ice for a playoff game.

How about this, instead: The Jets will be better off if Pavelec is less spectacular than he was last season.

We all remember the save of the year against Philly’s Jakub Voracek, when Pavelec reached back in desperation and robbed the Flyer of a goal.

I’m thinking Noel doesn’t want to see another save like that, or another game like that, for that matter, a run-and-gun affair that saw the Jets gas a victory in the dying seconds, then lose, 5-4, in overtime.

At home.

You know the kind of goaltending where you don’t really notice anything out of the ordinary, yet the guy never seems to give up more than three, and often it’s one or two?

Where he makes the first save by simply letting the puck hit him, often from a favourable angle, and the rubber is cleared quickly out of harm’s way?

That’s what the Jets need, which is to say they must play a much tighter, more disciplined game in front of their netminder.

Not that Pavelec, still just 25, can’t improve on the basics.

“He’s probably going to want to prove some things in a lot of different ways,” Noel said. “I’d like him to improve a little on the road, along with our team. And if those numbers can improve a bit, great.”

Those numbers aren’t flattering, by any stretch of the twine.

Pavelec’s goals-against-average (2.91) and save percentage (.906), ranked 39th and 35th, respectively, were hardly respectable in this day and age.

Of course when you’re facing more quality rubber than most of your peers, your stats will suffer. Kind of like the quarterback with a sieve for an offensive line. Soon the passes start hitting the turf, or the wrong hands.

Yet Pavelec himself deflects this notion like a slapper from the point.

When everybody from the coach to the average couch potato says Job 1 for the Jets is to reduce their goals against, he assumes they’re looking between the pipes.

“Of course it starts with me,” he said. “That’s the area I want to be better, that’s for sure. The goals against, that’s the key for everybody.”

Pavelec may still have to be the Jets MVP if they want to play for the Stanley Cup in the spring.

It just has to look a little easier than it did on too many nights last year.

“Of course it’s a team sport,” Pavelec reasoned. “We need to score the goals, we need a great power play, we need leadership. But everything starts with the goalies. Look at the last years, every team who make the playoffs or win the championship had a great goalie.”

You could probably find an exception or three in there, but he makes a point. They may have the puck for less time than anybody on the ice, but they are hockey’s quarterbacks, from which all success, or failure, emanates.

The Jets have a good one.

Now they need a better game plan.

And a commitment — to make Pavelec look better.

“If you’re going to play good and we’re not going to make the playoffs,” Pavelec said. “It’s going to be awful again.”

It all starts with Ondrej Pavelec for Winnipeg Jets

Winnipeg Jets head coach Claude Noel was talking about his No. 1 goalie, Thursday, when he struck at the heart of the matter.

“I’m not expecting him to carry anything,” Noel said.

“We need to help each other out, and we need to help him out as well.”

The common refrain seems to be that Ondrej Pavelec must raise his game to another level if he wants to lead his team onto the ice for a playoff game.

How about this, instead: The Jets will be better off if Pavelec is less spectacular than he was last season.

We all remember the save of the year against Philly’s Jakub Voracek, when Pavelec reached back in desperation and robbed the Flyer of a goal.

I’m thinking Noel doesn’t want to see another save like that, or another game like that, for that matter, a run-and-gun affair that saw the Jets gas a victory in the dying seconds, then lose, 5-4, in overtime.